Deep Packet Inspection.ca

Internet Service Providers (ISPs)   » Bell Canada

• Bell Wireline uses DPI for enhanced billing and traffic management purposes.
• DPI delays peer-to-peer data traffic during the periods of 4:30pm – 2:00am for Bell Internet DSL and 4:30pm – 1:00am for Bell Internet Portable and Rural.
• While Bell does collect personal information to applying DPI to traffic flows, it does not retain this information any longer than needed for real-time traffic management.

Bell Canada initially deployed DPI into their wireline networks ^[1] in October 2007 for Bell Internet DSL and December 2008 for Bell Internet Portable and Rural to improve their data collection functionality for billing purposes. They subsequently decided to use the technology for traffic management/throttling purposes.

Bell’s use of DPI for traffic management purposes was first brought before the CRTC in 2008 by the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, a group of ISPs involved in wholesale ADSL access service. In effect, CAIP purchases bandwidth from Bell and the Association protested Bell’s applying DPI for traffic management purposes on sold bandwidth. CAIP saw this as anti-competitive, insofar as it limited their ability to differentiate services from Bell, and raised contractual issues because Bell was affecting CAIP’s customers, with whom Bell had no contractual agreement. The CRTC rejected the position that Bell was engaging in anti-competitive acts and concluded that the delaying of content is not equivalent to the controlling of content.

In deliberations with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in 2009, it was affirmed that Bell Canada does not use their DPI equipment to develop information about particular users’ browsing history, search history, or email topics or content. Further, the telecommunications company does not cache any content, user-specific or not, or capture/playback data that Bell customers transmit to and from the ‘net. In both their filings to the Privacy Commissioner and the 2009 CRTC hearing into traffic management, Bell asserted that their equipment is not presently configured to distinguish types of customer content. The company is presently using DPI for aggregated monitoring and delaying of specific types (e.g. peer-to-peer) of data traffic instead of specific content (e.g. music, movies, or video). The ISP’s DPI equipment is not configured to ‘inject’ ads into any of their customers’ web browsing experiences. In a disagreement with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Bell asserts that its linking of a user’s identifier (not a subscriber’s actual name), Internet Protocol address, and timestamp is not a privacy issue, whereas the Commissioner disagreed. As a result, Bell was required to modify information on their website concerning this temporary collection of information, which the company has done.

In its February 23, 2009 filings Bell does recognize that, under certain circumstances such as legal intercept of traffic or network testing diagnostics, DPI may be configured to copy specific applications or user traffic into an “auxiliary interface where an external capture device is connected. This copy feature is not currently in use by Bell Wireline. Nevertheless, this is a common technique of wire sniffing or packet capturing. Many vendors on the market have tools to capture and analyze traffic without the need for DPI. Many ISPs use packet capture software or devices to troubleshoot without deploying DPI.”

Useful Information

• Bell’s network management policies

[1] Neither Bell Aliant or Bell Mobility utilize traffic management technologies, such as DPI, per their January 13, 2009 Submission to the CRTC.